Before he came to the University, sophomore anthropology major Drew Kincaid did not question the Bible. He said he still believes that God created the Earth and started it spinning on its axis, but since taking some classes toward his major, his mind has begun to change.
When he saw the bones of australopithecines, humans’ genetic ancestors, they appeared to have evolved into modern humans, he said.
“This is something I’ve been questioning lately,” Kincaid said. “In the long run it’s made me stronger.”
Still active in the Campus Crusade for Christ, Kincaid said he has experienced hostility because of his religious beliefs from some members of his fraternity.
In class, the story is different. His professors present facts in a nonreligious setting and do so to promote knowledge, not to attack Christianity, he said.
The debate between religion and evolution has manifested itself on college campuses nationwide. In California, a lawsuit currently under way between a group representing more than 4,000 Christian schools and the University of California system confronts the UC’s admission standards. The UC rejected four courses at one of the Association of Christian Schools International’s schools that were taught from a Christian stance. A UC spokesman called the courses academically inadequate and too focused on dogma, while a lawyer for the school said the UC
discriminated against the students because of their religious beliefs.
The University of Oregon employs practices and standards similar to California’s, as do most other institutions of higher learning nation wide, and Christianity has been a hot topic on this campus recently.
There has been controversy about the student publication The
Insurgent publishing cartoons of Jesus with an erection and columns satirizing Christianity. The Museum of Natural and Cultural History is displaying the studies of former professor Thomas Condon, a Christian minister who was one of the first
proponents of evolution during his studies in the late 1800s. The University Christian Fellowship presented a forum explaining and
defending intelligent design on May 4. Bishop John Shelby Spong spoke about progressive Christianity and what he sees as negative forces of fundamentalism on May 24.
Last week, confrontational evangelists spoke in the EMU Amphitheater about what they saw as a cesspool of sin on campus, drawing crowds of angry students.
The University’s policies and the recent debates on campus beg the question: How are religious issues and religious students treated in the classroom, specifically science classrooms? Most faculty interviewed by the Emerald said students with issues over a class’s treatment of religious topics should speak to them on a
one-on-one basis.
The policies there and here
The UC system has been accused of discriminating against Christian students in its admissions process. The case has hit a standstill, but, a spokesman said, a judge will decide July 6 whether to approve UC’s motion to dismiss some of the lawsuit’s claims. The university rejected four courses from an ACSI-represented high school because, its spokesman said, the classes teach more religion than science. Ricardo Vazquez, a UC spokesman, said the University of California rejected three courses from the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, Calif., because the University deemed their content academically inadequate. He said the primary goal of the courses is to teach religious doctrine, and that they don’t adequately prepare
students to handle the academic rigors of UC schools.
“Christian schools are not treated different from any other type of school,” Vazquez said.
The University rejected courses in biology, history and politics because of the textbooks the classes used proved inadequate, Vazquez said.
One biology textbook printed by conservative Christian publisher Bob Jones University Press states in its introduction that “if conclusions contradict the word of God, the conclusions are wrong no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.”
Robert Tyler, a lawyer for the high school students, said UC violated the First Amendment by rejecting the courses not based on their academic standards but by their religious content. He said the university practices viewpoint discrimination.
“They’re learning the same history, but from a more moral perspective than public school,” Tyler said.
The UC’s course accreditation requirements mirror those of
colleges and universities nationwide.
According to data from the United States Census Bureau, America is one of the most religious of all industrialized nations. But of all its states, Oregon has the fewest church-goers and is among the
highest percentages of people who identify as nonreligious. But the University of Oregon has policies that are similar to others around the country, accepting classes from regionally accredited schools that withstand scrutiny from administrators and instructors in the field. These administrators and teachers receive a list of courses from a school, and if they decide the classes correspond with a University course and they come from an accredited school, they are accepted.
Karen Sprague, a molecular biologist who teaches biochemistry and cell biology at the University and is the vice provost for undergraduate students, said science and religion are simply two different means for approaching different problems. She said she knows some scientists who are deeply religious and others who find religion useful in their work.
Sprague said the University accepts high school and transfer courses in biology because they correspond with courses taught here.
“We don’t accept transfer credits from Bible colleges in science,” she said. “If they taught a course that they called science that we would see as more religious, then we would not accept it. We make judgments on individual courses’ content.”
“I think the University has not only a right but a responsibility to decide courses to accept and not accept,” Sprague said.
The University’s Director of Admissions Martha Pitts said “our goal is to admit students well prepared for success.”
She said the University is a moderately selective institution requiring at least two years of college preparatory science classes for admission. The University only accepts courses from institutions recognized by a regional accreditation commission, which for Oregon schools is the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.
“The critical thing is to make sure that we are being fair and reasonable in requirements for courses,” she said.
Pitts said her department works with University faculty to determine which courses to accept and which to reject. The University will accept homeschooling or classes from unaccredited institutions that can prove their courses’ merit and
mettle, Pitts said.
She said the NWCCU accredits many courses from religious institutions and refuses to accredit some courses from nonreligious institutions.
“It’s an issue for all college campuses because we all have to make decisions about who we take,” she said.
This year, in Jim Long’s 28th year of teaching at the University, the senior instructor emeritus of chemistry participated in a panel discussion supporting intelligent design, the theory that states that living things are too complex to have evolved and therefore must have been created by God.
“I happen to believe that God is the one who created the universe (I just don’t know the details),” he wrote in an e-mail.
Long wrote that the University should not accept transfer credits in evolution courses from religious institutions, but it should accept credits in all other fields.
“If it’s a chemistry course from a school that espouses ID, the student would likely have learned solid chemistry,” he wrote. “Even biology should be acceptable from those schools.”
Spra
gue said students should learn to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the preconceived notions they bring with them to the University, but, she said, regardless of personal views, students in biology should be expected to understand evolution and the processes it attempts to explain.
The University offers no courses that accept intelligent design as a scientific theory.
Scientists teach what they find to be the best explanation, Sprague said, and most agree that the best explanation is not design theory.
A student could pass all the biology courses at the University without believing in evolution, Sprague said, but they would not gain all they could.
“Evolution is such a compelling theory,” Sprague said. “Evolution ties together so much of biology.”
Tim Oakley, principal of Damascus Christian School in Boring, Ore., said his school’s biology course teaches both creationism and evolution.
“We are obviously creationist in our approach to science,” he said. “There are a lot of holes, a lot of gaps in the theory (of evolution).”
He said his students have not experienced any difficulty in applying to the University.
Chris Guastaferro, high school principal for CS Lewis Academy in Newberg said his school teaches creationism instead of evolution and has never run into opposition from the University. He recalled a student accepted to the University who learned creationism because she took four years of science: life science, chemistry, physics and creationist biology.
“We believe God created the world and it wasn’t created through the process of evolution,” Guastaferro said. “That was the beginning of mankind, not some cosmic goo that morphed into people.”
Students’ experiences in the classroom
Christian students say that while they don’t believe in evolution, they can still do coursework in biology and learn. Professors agree.
Students at this traditionally liberal campus aren’t deeply troubled by the ideology of courses that don’t include creationism, and most don’t mind occasional jabs from professors.
A California native, Joe Christison studied microbiology as an undergraduate in Tennessee and now researches genetic and molecular specimens of zebrafish in the University’s graduate program in biology. He said he believes God creates new species and allows others to die off, and that reason guides his beliefs.
“You don’t have faith or believe in something unless you have reason to,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that go through pain and suffering because it fits their worldview.”
He said politics drives the classroom emphasis on evolution because if a teacher challenges it, the institution will cut that teacher’s funding.
“People have to be willing to say they don’t know,” he said.
He said he confronted opposition to his beliefs only once as an
undergraduate in a biology lecture hall when a professor made a joke deriding religious perspectives on science, but felt validated, he said, when no one laughed.
Elisa Halemeier, a sophomore majoring in biology and family and human services, was in seventh grade when she met the Lord, she said.
“I love it here and there’s no other school I would rather be at,” Halemeier said.
Halemeier believes God created the Earth and all its individual species, and even though many people in the biology department would say she’s crazy, she said, the science she studies bolsters her faith.
She said she has never been offended in class even though her professors teach evolution as fact. She has not spoken with her professors because she feels that would only cause an argument, she said.
Gabriel LeMay graduated from the University with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2004. While at the University, LeMay lived at the Onyx House, a live-in extension of the Eugene Faith Center youth ministry, where his faith in God developed. He believes God created the Earth, but that adaptations happen to a degree.
“Personally,” he said, “I’m willing to believe that God created humans and apes and chickens and amoebas separately.”
He said he took what his professors said in class not as fact but as belief to be taken with a grain of salt. His faith taught him to accept his teachers’ emphasis on evolution, he said. When teachers would make jokes about creationism, he said, he would get a little worked up, but he knew the territory when he chose the major.
A senior majoring in biology and human physiology, Luke Dohman is in an evolution class right now.
“I do believe in some of the things he talks about,” Dohman said. “I disbelieve in the fact that we evolved from apes.”
He said people are entitled to their opinions, and he respects that. He said he has never felt offended in class, even though he sees the information presented as one-sided.
He came to the University with the exact same beliefs he has today, he said, although it has strengthened his understanding of the world and of other people.
Debbie Schlenoff, an adjunct instructor of biology at the University, said “I don’t think you can teach biology or understand the natural world without understanding evolution.”
Throughout her career, Schlenoff has taught evolution, human genetics, human physiology, anatomy, animal behavior and neurobiology.
“A belief system is faith,” Schlenoff said, “but science isn’t about belief. You don’t believe in evolution; it’s an explanation.”
Schlenoff said students should have the opportunity to discuss their different points of view, but the
debate belongs outside of science classrooms. Students of all different backgrounds belong in the classroom so long as they are willing to understand the material presented.
“If they’re going to resist understanding, I don’t see what the point would be in taking this class,” Schlenoff said. “As long as they’re willing to do the work, they can take the class.”
Schlenoff said the best students keep their minds open.
Biology instructor Alan Kelly took a similar standpoint.
“There’s no denying evolution happens. There’s no reasonable argument against it,” he said.
He said students who do not believe in evolution, however, have as much chance of success in biology classes as the theory’s proponents.
“Most instructors would say the goal is to understand evolution and its processes,” Kelly said. “If you choose not to accept or believe it, well, that’s your decision.”
He said the University is correct in its decision not to accept transfer credits in science from certain institutions that teach from fundamentalist viewpoints, but that the University should try to bring religious students into the fold and break down stereotypes about the debate. He said professors should address concerns on an individual basis.
“When they hear evolution they automatically hear a threat to their beliefs,” he said. “Ignorance is hurting the students.”
In Frank Stahl’s close to half a century as a professor of biology at the University, only once did a student take objection to one of his lectures for religious reasons, he said. Stahl told the student he hoped that by the end of the course the student would be able to answer his questions on his own.
Stahl invited the student to office hours, but he never showed, he said.
Regardless of their beliefs, he said, most students come to the biology department to learn.
Stahl said the University’s goal of challenging conventional wisdom for deeper understanding stands in direct conflict with the ethics of conservative religious students.
“They may be right,” Stahl said, “but why they come here I can’t imagine.”
“If it opens their minds, that’s great. But some of them seem to come with their minds locked,” Stahl said.
Stahl said that while lecturing at Dartmouth College a student
suggested that because more than half of the residents of her home state of Alabama believe in intelligent design, it should
be taught in schools along with evolution.
“We don’t t
each about witchcraft anymore, but a lot of people used to believe in it,” Stahl said. “We’re seeing a little war between faith on one hand and reason on the other, and I though that war was won in the 1700s.”
Contact the general assignment reporter at
[email protected]